1. Field
One embodiment of the present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and image processing method for processing an image, and a video reception apparatus including the image processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in order to sharpen a video picture to be displayed on a display device, correction processing is often applied to a video signal. For example, as an image processing technique used to suppress granularity or the like of a display video picture, a smoothing technique is known.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication (KOKAI) No. H8-16776 discloses a technique for applying smoothing processing to a local region in an image. However, the technique described in the above reference cannot often apply effective processing. For example, a small tone step may exist in a plain region in an image. Such tone step (boundary) causes a Mach band. When different tones are continuously allocated in a domain, even if a tone difference is small, the boundary is recognized as a stripe pattern. The Mach band is readily generated in a digital video picture including discrete data. The technique described in the above reference cannot eliminate such phenomenon.